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You can’t take yourself too seriously. If you do you are buying your own con – Ferrol Sams
It’s a quote I found in a book entitled Last Bus to Albequerque and it struck a chord with me when I first read it back in 1994. I used the first half of it as one of my over the desk mottos; the whole thing was too long and, in any case, if anyone thought that I was a con artist I didn’t want anything over my desk that appeared to confirm that view!
But the sentiment is a strong one, and it took a while for me to realise that I had fallen into the trap of taking myself very seriously indeed; the blinding flash that showed me what a complete idiot I was making of myself was an unpleasant realisation. As I write these words now I am transported back to about 1984 when I had that moment on the road to Damascus so to speak.
Having been able to see the problem and deal with it made a big difference to me in many ways, both professional and personal. I began to enjoy myself and I got even better at what I did as a result. When I adopted the strapline of “25 years of having fun whilst making things happen” last year, that is exactly what I meant.
Getting a laugh out of every day isn’t always easy, and there have been times when black humour has won through. I won’t repeat some of the jokes here because I recognise that they were offensive to some, but in the context of our team and the moment they were just what we needed to lift the mood. The best ones were, of course, the ones that punctured my dignity and I’ll share a couple here.
My team and I managed a diverse property estate and most of the team would have to travel to get to a common location, so hotels provided a neutral venue, but at the previous couple of meetings I had felt it necessary to mention standards of dress; we were on show and the welcome board in reception told everyone which company we represented. After the second warning one of the team challenged me quietly and suggested that suits and ties were maybe too formal, so could we not have a smart casual regime, maybe golf clubhouse standards? I took the point and smart casual was the order of the day for the next meeting. I turned up in golf shirt and chinos to find the rest all in their best business suits – game set and match to the team.
Another time I had been banging the environmental drum and we had begun to have our site vehicles and equipment painted green in an effort to raise awareness amongst our tenants and generally push the Green boat out. Then came a meeting to discuss the issue of the latest set of site manuals for our tenants. “I suppose you want green binders?” I was asked, and the answer was, of course, “Yes”. On leaving that meeting I was reminded that I should wear overalls when on that site as it was both protocol and would be part of the new Health & Safety plan in respect of wearing personal protective equipment (lead from the front John). I mentioned, sheepishly, that my girth had outgrown my overalls and that a new set were needed. No problem, they’d be waiting for me on my next visit. And they were, in lurid green! Team 10, Bowen 0.
You can’t take yourself too seriously.you do, no-one else is going to take your side.
putting it right when it’s all gone horribly wrong
The fact that most of the major retail success stories are down to managing that margin so well is something I admire. The evolution of retail logistics, information systems and facilities management have been entwined with my own working life for the last 40 odd years and have fascinated and involved me.
So I hold retail as a sector, and retails units as a specific, up as paragons and an example of how to really do it when I write here and talk to groups and, in general, I can see no reason why I should need to change my mind. I think that the retail sector will continue to lead the way in many fields of business.
So it comes as something of a smack in the face when my nearest hypermarket provides a shopping experience that reeks of massive neglect and also demonstrates how not to do it in so many directions; the chillers and freezer cabinets are always on the blink with leaking water all over the floor and that means lost hours mopping up, wasted product, lost sales and frustrated employees and customers (last Sunday most of the freezer area was empty and cordoned off). The place is generally scruffy and it is easy to sense the people problems that knock on from a site in trouble. These are not just the occasional clump of moaning employees blocking up an aisle while they vent their spleens on the management in front of customers, but also in the attitude to customers.
Further signs of leadership not being up to scratch include empty roll cages blocking aisles , shelf pricing and offer information not being consistent and often missing and poor shelf stocking. Almost everywhere I look there will be something that is a classic example of doing it the wrong way.
The place is pretty much a model of everything that could be wrong, and yet this is one of the country’s leading retailers, and at a site that is busy with both regulars and, because of its location, somewhere that must get a fair deal of passing trade.
Enough of the problems, how do you turn this sort of situation around? The first stage is to work on the people. Morale is hard to lift when people see the place running down, so you have to instil some belief in the leadership so that they will start to follow. Getting the basics right and enthusing your team is a leadership fundamental, but requires some support from above in a big organisation. The people are not stupid and will not get behind someone who they think will not be around for too long.
Next you do need to be able to find some money to spend on the place. This is not just about lifting your team, but also about that other group of people that you rely on; your customers. This particular store has had some money spent on it, but for a store within store operation who no doubt contributed towards their pitch.
Turning things around takes time, effort and cash, but the results tend to pay back handsomely if you can get it right. We know a lot of the people who serve us at the emporium I refer to above and would love to see them have somewhere better for them to work as well as for us to shop. This weekend, we’ll be somewhere else though, and they’ll find takings are down by a few more bob each week for a while, because we can’t rely on them having what we need.
Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.
This is often bandied around as a motivational quote, but like many such quotes, it has its detractors. I don’t pretend to know what William Jennings Bryan had on his mind when he said this, but I have my own thoughts.
On the one hand I often argue here that the choices we make influence what we end up as, and that I’m unlikely to change my mind on. My own experience, both of what has happened to me and what I’ve seen happen to others, is that your choices have a big impact. Of course there are circumstances not of your making that will affect how your life turns out. I wrote last week about the fickle finger of fate and how none of us know how long we have here.
So no, we don’t choose everything that comes our way. The trick for me is in how we react to the slings and arrows through our lives. As with the quotation that started this off, there are loads of old adages, all of which have a modicum of truth in them. One that suits my line of thought here is “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. You can roll over and moan when things go wrong, or you can try to turn something positive from the experience.
On that basis I have no time for the arguments of those who would reject the premise as not being a law of life. Of course we have no choice in many aspects of our existence; we don’t chose to be brought into life and many choices are made for us by others during our formative years, but we do have the choice of whether or not we learn at school for example, and we have choices about how we approach whatever job we manage to find ourselves.
Not everyone is going to make big sums of money, but that isn’t the only measure of success in life. You can either sit around and wait for something to happen or you can make an effort. You won’t win them all, but you have to be in it to win it, so if you don’t try you don’t have a chance. Even a lottery winner made the effort to pick some numbers and buy a ticket.
Having dreams is fine, but they need a little work to make them come true. It’s fine to look up in wonder at the heights and want to be there looking down, but those who go for a ladder have the right idea.
It doesn’t matter how hard things look there is always an opportunity to try something. One of my schoolboy heroes in the late 50s and early 60s was the great Swedish rally driver Eric Carlson. A bear of a man he could make those little 2 stroke Saabs dance over the ice and through the forests, and at a time when such cars were just modified production vehicles with little of the safety aids of today. There was also no route reconnaissance or pace notes, but when he was asked about what went through his mind heading over a blind crest at night in the forest at 100 mph, he shrugged and said, “Well, the road must go somewhere”.
For all of us we have these blind crests on the road of life; destiny may not always be in our hands, and whatever WJB had in mind when he uttered his words I don’t know, but for me they do make a connection. I’d rather go down trying than crying.
don’t fear failure; just live and learn
Somewhere amongst all my various scribbling is a line about my successes having shaped me, but it being my failures that have made me. It is a play on the Einstein quote along the lines people who haven’t made a mistake haven’t tried anything, but I do believe that it is the things that I’ve done wrong, or not well enough, that I’ve truly learned from.
Of course you do also learn from success, but it is sometimes easier to just party and enjoy your moment of triumph. Another of my little mottos back in the days when I had a team was that the team succeeds, but failures are mine. That one was largely about me taking it on the chin when things went wrong, but it was also about letting the team celebrate the wins whilst I got to think about why we had won.
You can’t win them all. That’s not being defeatist, it’s being realistic. If you’re good enough, whether as an individual or as a team, then you can enjoy long runs of success. You can win more that you lose, but sooner or later there will be someone who will beat you. That is healthy, and one of the other lessons that I have learned along the way is that you don’t take defeats personally. Business is business; allowing emotions to get in the way is a waste of energy that you could put to better use on positive things.
Of course I’m still competitive and I don’t like to lose, but I’ve come to accept that there are times when what I have isn’t what is needed on the day to pull off the win. And I don’t take too much notice of luck either. Gary Player once said that the more he practised the luckier he got. You make your own luck most of the time.
Another factor is in being willing to compete. Would you rather be played 3 won 3, or played 30 won 27? Even if you’re played 30 won 3 at least you are trying, and I’ll always applaud a trier over someone who is afraid to go into the arena. You can always develop someone who is willing to try, and they are often more likely to be consistent winners than someone with talent who won’t risk themselves. Just look at the talent that the England football team squandered at the last World Cup where a fear of losing appeared to be greater than the desire to win.
Sport and business are not the same, but there are the parallels; a well motivated and led team will do well in either. And those who are prepared to push themselves hard will do well in either; and what is the point if you’re not going to keep on challenging yourself? I’ll offer another sporting quotation; “To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of one’s life to do nothing with one’s ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement not in years alone.” That was written nearly 50 years ago by Bruce McLaren following the death of his team mate Timmy Mayer.
Most of us don’t have the risk of death implicit in our business life, although some do, but, as I wrote last week we don’t know how long we have on this planet. We might as well do something worthwhile with the time that we have, and if that means a few mistakes then so what; live and learn.
putting customers first takes more than just calling them customers
At one time there was great trouble throughout the land. The people were not getting their just desserts, but this had gone on for so long that they had ceased to complain and they had become stoic in their acceptance.
It came at first as a whisper, as the first stirring of a breeze breaks the calm when a hurricane is due and, like a hurricane the word was to sweep through the land uprooting the trees of resistance in its path. And the name of this hurricane was Customer First, although it was to have as many names as it had priests, for each was to brand it according to their own ways (and fee scales).
And Lo! The people did become customers; not just those in the shops and retail premises, but no longer they that travelled by train, ship, ‘plane or bus would be called passengers. No longer would those who occupied premises, whether domestic or for their trade, be called tenants. No longer would those in ill health and needing to see the physician be called patients. No longer (yes, yes, all right; we get the picture – ed).
From that day hence they would all be customers and all would be well. Their time of strife would be over and they could rest easy for, when they handed over their hard earned coin, all would be well and they would be treated in the manner to which they should.
And so the priests, gurus, mentors, consultants and trainers did prosper, their pockets full of their client’s gold, and there was great rejoicing throughout the land. Those who proclaimed the way of the Customer grew rich and, in some cases, famous. Those who had sought their help (he’s off again. Enough! – ed).
Ok, let’s cut the pseudo biblical stuff, leave this fantasy world behind and consider ours. Are you getting better service because your train operator calls you a customer? Or anywhere else where you have become “a customer”? I doubt it. Sure there have been improvements in some places, yes, but that is because people have been better trained, not because of a name change. You might argue that the name change brought about a change of thinking, but I would suggest that such influence was limited. When I travel in someone else’s vehicle I am a passenger; when I have treatment at the medic’s I am a patient and so on. I find inappropriate use of customer patronising, how about you?
Maybe I am in a minority on this (that would be good, I might have rights), and I know I am being a bit obtuse here, but the point of this missive is that you have to mean it to make a difference. Just calling something by a different name doesn’t, on its own, make a change. For me it is the equivalent of the old dodgy car dealer’s “change the plates and give it a re-spray”, and is about as salubrious.
My train of thought here came from having been pulled up for referring to the people who were renting premises as tenants. “They’re customers” I was told, but then the attitude towards them would not have been out of place for the inmates of a labour camp. Calling them customers made no difference to the way they were seen or treated, so why bother with the pretence. OK, this is an extreme example, but does calling me a customer improve my rail service? No, but what would make a difference is changing the service I get for my money. That’s the challenge.
are meetings the bane of your life?
They certainly can be; the difference between a well run one and a poorly run one is like night and day, but what makes the difference?
The person chairing, or leading, the meeting is the key, but chairing the meeting is just one part of the whole deal. For me the issue is that so many people see the meeting as an entity in its own right rather than as an integral part of the process of making things happen.
So often the meeting becomes just an event that gets put in the diary and you get on with life in between the last one and the next one with no real connection. The agenda will turn up, maybe with some additional material, a few days before the meeting date and then you all turn up and go through the motions. More than a few will be ill prepared, not have read the papers or reports before the meeting, and those present will stagger through as best as they can. Where things haven’t gone right or deadlines have been missed there will be a few apocryphal stories trotted out, and everyone will want to chuck in their own version and, if the chair isn’t fully in control, there might be a bit of finger pointing to deflect blame. At best there might be an action to have got it done by the next meeting, but no-one will remember that until the agenda and minutes are circulated just before the next meeting, so it won’t be too much of a problem if people just ignore the whole thing. So you dispose of the coffee and biscuits and vanish until the next one comes round.
I’m being harsh maybe, and certainly cynical, but I’m pretty sure that some of you will recognise roughly that scenario. It is a composite of many that I have had to go through over the years. And they still continue, often even at board level, so goodness knows what meetings at those companies are like lower down the chain.
One factor that causes this problem is that people often don’t know how to make decisions. You may say that that is a daft thing to say, but it is true nonetheless; the ability to make decisions, or at least decent decisions, is sadly lacking in many organisations.
One of the worst excesses I have come across is the monthly review meeting. Everyone submits their departmental report, so all those at the meeting should have read it and be aware of how the others are doing. If there are any problems then they should be prepared to bring them up, but what happens? Everyone goes through their report at the meeting regardless and nothing really gets moved forward.
Meetings are part of moving things along, so they need to be treated as a point where the key people involved come together to resolve issues, so the first thing to be doing is making sure that the meeting is about the issues. What needs to be done, by whom and by when and what resource is needed to accomplish it. If people are armed with facts and not anecdotes they will be able to assess these points, agree on the risks of failure (so that the priorities can be understood) and make an appropriate decision. Job done; next issue, and do the same there.
At a project meeting last week we came prepared. Papers circulated had been read, the issues were discussed and we were agreed on who was doing what and by when and done in 30 minutes.
Partnerships or Competition?
Competition, taking sides, winners and losers or true partners taking things forward for common good? My thoughts on this started off from work I’m doing for a client where we have some EU competition issues, and then I read a tweet from Cathy Hayward where someone had mentioned the reaction of their purchasing team to talk of partnerships.
I’m often labelled as a Purchasing Expert, but it is just one thing that I have experience of. I see myself more as a businessman who has, over the years variously been John the Buyer, John the Salesman and finally John the Operations guy trying to deliver what the Sales people have sold with what the Buying people have bought for me. It ain’t easy, believe me, but I’ve made a decent living along the way and had a lot of fun.
One of the things that can hold a business back is functions not getting on, so let’s look at the three tribes:
Purchasing people tend to thrive on the competitive element of their profession. Keeping the market on its toes and keeping their pencils sharp so that the best deals are struck. Shaking up the mix is what it’s all about.
Operations people prefer an element of stability so that they can build up working relationships with both customers and suppliers and have enough other issues that bring instability to the daily lives without any artificial stimulus.
So where does that leave Sales people? On the one hand they want the stability because they can build relationships, cross sell and have a quiet life enjoying the expense account and the Mondeo but, on the other hand, if there is too much stability, how do they break into new markets and clients? It’s ironic, but they actually need the world that the buyers are trying to create because that instability is a major source of opportunity.
Competition does mean that there will be winners and losers, and there is nothing wrong in that. It is a fact of nature that we can see all around us any day of the week if we bother to look. The plant life that we all pass by daily reminds us of how the struggle for survival works and it is foolish to ignore that competition is a fundamental element of what has made humans what we are. Look at the stupidities of trying to eliminate the competitive element factor from schools as a prime example of where that leads.
Whilst competition is good there is also strength in combining efforts to work towards common good. For me the point about competition is that it has its place, but collaboration does too.
Like so many things, competition is a tool and, like all tools, you need to use it well and in the right circumstances. I could buy the best saw on the market, but if I went down to the lumber yard and bought a dozen different sorts of timber there is a fair chance that I would ruin both my new saw and some of the wood in short order because you need even different saws for different woods.
So blindly applying competition to sourcing needs is as much of a waste (and don’t get me started on e-auctions) as trying to do fret work with a panel saw. The art of good buying is to use the right method for each requirement. If you can do that then the right deals will generally fall into place.
So to get it right requires collaboration between good people, but isn’t that always the way?
Put people at the heart of what you are doing
It’s all about the people. Not the first time I’ve covered this, nor will it be the last, but a few things have drawn me back to this subject. First off sorting out a problem for a client where things had bogged down into an email war. This must be the modern equivalent of trench warfare; you dig into your position and hurl stuff at the other party who is equally well dug in on their side. No-one wins. After two weeks of cyber missives flying back and forth the problem was solved in 45 minutes face to face working around the table.
The next day came another example of the power of people. A client has a supplier problem where legal people are involved on both sides, but half an hour on the phone has seen the first progress for about 10 days. Once again you get things moving when people start to talk and work with each other.
Humans are social animals and we like to congregate of our own accord, but we also have the problem in some countries, the UK being one, where we are all thrown together because there are so many of us in a small space and are forced to get along. Making it easy for us to do what we need to do helps remove some of the frustrations that cause problems between people. If the roads are not clogged we don’t get road rage, for example.
And that brings me on to the role of facilities management people. We have our definitions of FM, and they are fair enough, but since I’ve been involved in FM I’ve seen the role as one of facilitation to a large degree. The make it easy for the people in the building to do what they come there for. When you go to work there are lots of little things that can act like a handful of sand in the gearbox; no one grain will break it, but the combined effect will be to wear it out quickly. Problems at work have the same effect. The copier won’t work, the lift is out of order again, the car park is always flooded (see last week’s Musing) and so on.
All of these distract people from doing what they are there to do and make them less productive. Amongst other things FM sorts all of that out. It’s people working with and for each other gives you team work and synergy, the sum of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
The buildings and the technology are just tools. If no-one uses them they will just sit there and crumble away eventually, but they are created by people. It’s people that have the great ideas to move things forward and it’s other people that have the skills to translate the ideas into physical reality. So why do we so often forget that it is people that will have to use what we create?
All too often I see projects where there is some glorious aim in mind, but none of it gives much thought to the people that will have to work with or around it. New shiny technology is bought and deployed without any real thought of the people who it will be inflicted on. How many new buildings have I spent the first year on just making them user friendly?
People power is huge (just look at Egypt right now) so make it work. Put human interaction at the heart of what you do and you won’t go too far wrong.
what will people remember you for?
“At least you sorted the drains out”. Will that be my epitaph?
The comment came during a chance meeting with someone who worked for me twenty odd years ago, but whom I’ve not seen for five or six years. It refers to an incident at a site that I had taken over running the operations at and where there had been a perennial problem with flooding. I had been standing in the car park in the aftermath of the first big summer storm following a project to fix the problems admiring the gently steaming tarmac when my boss squared walked quietly up behind me and said, “There may be doubts as to whether or not Mussolini made the trains run on time, but at least you’ll be able to claim that you made the drains work as your legacy to mankind”.
To set out to leave some form of legacy by which you will be remembered may not be a bad thing, but it does require elements of conceit and vanity (both of which I plead guilty of from time to time). The danger comes when those vices get in the way of what you are trying to deliver and the end result becomes more about you than those who might otherwise benefit, and I’ve seen that blight often enough to be wary of it in anything that I set out to achieve these days.
As a young man I can remember being told of the bucket of water test. You plunge in both hands and swirl for all you are worth, but so quickly after you take your hands out do those waters become still again leaving no trace of your efforts. Along the same lines I am minded of an old Scots lament:
“Mony’s the ane for him makes mane, But nane sall ken whar he is gane.
Ower his white bones, when they are bare, The wind sall blaw for evermair”.
Very few people do something that leaves a long term mark, and often those that do are those who had the fortune to have circumstances collide with need rather than any plans for greatness coming to fruition. Cometh the hour, cometh the man sort of thing.
Maybe it is more the little things that you do that will make a difference. I sorted the drains by getting a CCTV survey done rather that spending a 5 figure sum every year on jet blasting as my predecessors had done. That meant that I could invest money in the two or three areas where there was a major problem and get them fixed properly. It worked and a significant irritant for the 1300 or so people who worked on the site went away.
That is classic facilities management stuff; making life better for the workers helps productivity and better productivity means more profitable business, more satisfied customers and all of those fine things. Facilities management people fix stuff. As Dara O’Briain said when he provided the entertainment at the BIFM Awards dinner a few years ago, we are like the fairies at the bottom of the garden, doing things un-noticed.
So we have a lesson in humility maybe? It isn’t about the individual so much as the part that the individual plays in their environment and the contribution that they make.
But the other lesson here is a leadership one. Recognition is a powerful reward: I got a nice glow from someone remembering and saying so. Why not thank someone today, and maybe your legacy will be to be remembered as a nice person. I’d settle for that.
could you manage a little consideration and tolerance in the season of goodwill?
People seem to see things in such black and white terms these days. You love it or you hate it, or something is right or wrong with nothing in between. But is that really true? No of course it isn’t, but why can’t people be bothered to come to a considered decision.
What started me off on this topic was the Vince Cable affair of last week where yet another scam interview had elicited some ill judged remarks and Mr Cable was being pilloried. Now I don’t know the guy, and haven’t really paid too much attention to what he’s been up to since being thrust into office, but I do appreciate what the Government is trying to do in terms of getting us out of the hole the other mob had dug us into and my impressions of Mr C were that he wasn’t doing too badly in playing his part. But does what he said suddenly turn him into such a villain? I don’t think so, especially when compared with some of the conduct we have seen from public figures over the last 15 years or so.
As people we are not necessarily all good or all bad. Doing one good thing or making one mistake doesn’t necessarily move us far in one direction or the other either. There are degrees in all of these things that we ought to allow for.
Love and hate are very powerful emotions and are polar extremities with a wide spectrum in between, so why do people want to only be at one or other end of that range? I doubt that they really are, it’s just another example of poor use of language, exaggerating for effect rather than anything else. Personally I made a conscious effort to avoid hate a long time ago. It seemed like such a waste to me to hate something; to be generating the necessary degree of rage that would go with hate consumes so much energy that can be put to more positive things. I try not to even use the word in every day speech.
It is perfectly possible to neither like nor dislike something, or to just like or dislike something a little. You can like something some of the time, but not all of the time. There is no reason to even be consistent, let alone extreme, about these things. In the same way, right and wrong are not always absolutes. Context plays a big part in understanding these things and that is where consideration and judgement come in.
Perhaps this is all just semantics and maybe the words don’t really matter, but I think that they do. If folks were to apply consideration and judgement a little more (are you listening Vince?) they could be a little more rational perhaps? One of my great sadness’s about modern Britain is in how selfish and inconsiderate people have become, so any move to improve that would have my support.
I wrote recently about the pendulum effect whereby allowing things to go to one extreme causes the inevitable backswing to the opposite end of the arc, and suggested that a bit more time in the tolerant middle ground would be beneficial in maintaining a more balanced and stable society.
Things aren’t always black or white, and things can, sometimes, be partly right or partly wrong. In the season of peace and goodwill my message is let’s all try to weigh things a little, be a bit more tolerant of others and to see things in a few shades of grey, or even a little colour.
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